


These Stupid Rules

by MintChocolateLeaves



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Crimes & Criminals, DCMK Secret Santa, F/M, Gen, Heist, Minor Romance, Mostly Gen, Theft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintChocolateLeaves/pseuds/MintChocolateLeaves
Summary: Despite his retirement as Kaitou KID, Kaito returns for one final heist after blackmailers attempt to take the Blue Parrot - and this time, he's not doing it alone.-OR-You don't mess with Jii Kounosuke. You just don't. That was the first mistake.
Relationships: Hakuba Saguru & Koizumi Akako & Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid & Nakamori Aoko, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Shounen Tantei-dan | Detective Boys, Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid/Nakamori Aoko, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	These Stupid Rules

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a secret santa gift for Raphillia! 
> 
> Merry belated Christmas to everyone who celebrates the holiday. This is split into several chapters, because try as I might, I couldn't finish it all in the allotted time because of health reasons! BUT! I'm excited to offer the prelude to the fic today, and to hopefully update the rest of the fic over the next few days / weeks!

_Prelude i_.

They were playing detective when the magic show broke out in the park. The magician, a man with dark hair windswept back not with gel but seemingly from sleep entered the park with a grin and a bounce to his step. His assistant, a woman who looked scarily similar to Conan’s big sister Ran, followed behind him to set the stage.

Grinning at the magic tricks, the Detective Boys leader – Ayumi – turned to her fellow detectives, with a slightly raised eyebrow. On the cusp of their teenage years, the preteens were ready to step in the footsteps of Kudo Shinichi and other great teen detectives, and as such, were always in search for new puzzles to solve.

Magic shows like the one the magician and his assistant were setting up for? An easy puzzle.

Genta and Mitsuhiko both offered silent nods. Her best friend, Ai, rolled her eyes.

Magic, Ayumi knew, wasn’t some force of nature conjured up by spells and unseen forces of nature. The world was rooted in natural laws and science – all magic came down to was tricking the eye into believing such laws of nature have been broken. Probability and sleight of hand was the basis of magic.

It all came down to deception, essentially.

The four of them moved closer to the show, brows furrowed. The magician had all sorts of props by him – enough that Ayumi wasn’t sure which trick they’d go with first. The box they wheeled in, small with a magician’s hat inside, seemed like the perfect area to hide a rabbit, or any other item to pretend it’d been made from thin air.

A pack of unopened cards sat beside it. An empty birdcage.

All of the usual cliches.

“Today children,” the magician said, as he tapped at his cheek. “We don’t want you to be critics, my assistant and I want you to simply _enjoy_ the sights of magics beyond your expectations.”

“There aren’t any tricks,” the magician’s assistant added, a smile tugging at her lips. “Just magic.”

Ayumi scoffed, shaking her head. Yeah, _right._ Like she would believe that.

“But for those who’re more critical than others.” The magician’s eyes were glittering, alight with mirth and amusement. “Please, do try to prove us wrong.”

The show began.

Ayumi knew there were tricks – there was enough there that within reason they should’ve been able to piece things together, but the puzzle was a triangle when she’d been prepare for a square.

“Did you get anything?” She asked, as they were leaving.

The boys shook their heads.

“ _Nothing?”_

How could none of them see _anything._ Magic wasn’t real and these were _simple_ magic tricks. They were meant to be _detectives._

“Let’s go and ask detective Kudo about it,” Ayumi said. “Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something about it.”

* * *

_Prelude ii._

Detective Kudo Shinichi might have lived in the Beika prefecture, but he operated out of the main Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in Chiyoda. Built in 1980, the building was eighteen floors tall – a horror to all working on the top floors whenever the elevators go down.

Luckily, Detective Kudo didn’t work on the eighteenth floor, and as the Detective Boys headed inside to the familiar area, they were greeted to fully functional elevators.

The police station was built of corridors and rooms that seemed almost like a maze, but policy dictated that the Detective Boys couldn’t go up and explore them without a police officer escorting them around. Instead, they deigned to wait until detective Kudo had a moment to talk with them.

A rare thing, but he was a remarkable detective, and he always found a few minutes to square away from them whenever the came to bother him during work hours. All they needed was a quick text message and to bug the officer working at the front desk and after a few minutes of waiting–

“What trouble have you gotten into this time?” Detective Kudo asked by way of greeting. He looked tired, not that this was an oddity. From what their big sister Ran said, he was always staying up late reading books and work emails – he was even supposed to wear prescription lenses, although Ran always said he adamantly refused, sticking instead to contacts.

“That’s rude Kudo-kun,” Ai said, in that calm, cool tone she always managed to exude. In fact, Ayumi didn’t think she’d ever seen Ai anything _but_ cool. She was amazing – Ayumi always considered herself lucky to have her for a friend. “They haven’t done anything.”

“Wha–” Mitsuhiko said, “why aren’t _you_ involved in the trouble that we haven’t caused?”

Ai simply turned, staring as she raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve been part of the trouble before,” Genta protested.

Ai’s eyebrow raised even higher, expectant.

“Ai just goes along with the trouble we cause, honestly…” Ayumi said with a faint laugh. “But you’re not supposed to tell Detective _Kudo_ that though.”

Detective Kudo’s lips tugged up in a faint amusement and nostalgia.

“Well then,” he began, “if you’re not all causing trouble, why am I here?”

He said it in a way that indicated they were always bringing trouble to his workplace. Which was fal–

Okay, so maybe it was true. They’d all experienced their own share of crimes. It was like when Conan left to go back to America, he’d given them his natural magnetism to finding crimes. Split between the four remaining Detective Boys it was less potent a force, but still…

“We went to a _magic show_ ,” Ai said, in a tone that clearly meant something to Kudo, but not to them. Sometimes, it felt like Ai had an unspoken bond with Kudo, an understanding. Maybe it was because they were both so cool, Ayumi wasn’t too sure.

No amount of overthinking it ever gave her a logical answer. She’d have to figure it out when she had more evidence at her disposal.

“Ah,” Kudo nodded. “Alright then. I take it you couldn’t figure some of the tricks out?”

Ayumi pressed her lips together, shook her head. “We couldn’t get _any_ of them.”

“Hm,” Kudo said, brows furrowing. “I see. Explain some of the tricks to me while I get some coffee, we’ll see if we can’t figure any of it out.”

* * *

_Prelude – iii._

“You know,” Kudo said, after a coffee and a few solved magic tricks. “There’s a detective that I know that works theft with a penchant for solving magic tricks. If you want the other tricks solved, I’m sure he’d be able to find a few minutes to spare.”

He sounded fond. Not in the way Kudo did whenever mentioning the other detectives he worked with in homicide’s division one, or Osaka’s famous detective, Hattori Heiji, but there was a hint of respect and faint competition to his voice.

“Oh?” Ai asked.

“Hakuba Saguru,” Kudo explained. “He used to work on the Kaitou KID cases, before those stops.”

“The magician thief!” Ayumi said, brightening. She wasn’t like Kudo, who spent his youth solving mostly murders – cases on career criminals were far more interesting, especially such long lasting criminals.

“That’s the guy,” Kudo nods. “Hakuba got used to solving magic tricks, so he could probably be able to help you with the rest.”

“That’d be great, can you really do that?” Ayumi asked.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kudo said. “I’ll message him about it – I think I saw him leaving the precinct when I came down to meet you four, but I’ll see if he’s got a spare five minutes at some point.”

Hopefully, Hakuba would be willing to talk to them. They’d figure out what the magic tricks meant – they _would._

* * *

_Prelude iv._

They could only take so much of Kudo’s time before he had to get back to work and they had to find something else to do. Mitsuhiko suggested going to go play some soccer. Genta wanted to go get some snacks.

Ayumi, their leader, made the executive decision that they would buy snacks on the way back to the park. Pocky and sakura candy obtained, they made the walk back to the park while Mitsuhiko ran home to collect the worn soccer ball they’d been playing with since elementary school.

It had probably been Conan’s once, but oh well. He’d left it behind, so it was now property of the Detective Boys and that decision wouldn’t be overruled.

Reaching the park shouldn’t have led them into anything odd occurrences. Their morning had been normal, nothing odd had happened in the early afternoon. So, with the way things were going, expectedly things should continue not to be strange.

(Even though logically, Ayumi knew that wasn’t how the world worked, that things just _happened,_ it was a comforting thought to be able to fall back on when logical thinking became too much.)

That was to say, they weren’t expecting the flashing lights accompanied by sirens.

“Let’s go look!” Genta said. Ayumi nodded, running through the trees to get a closer look. They’d trust Mitsuhiko to follow the sirens to find them if they weren’t back at their usual spot before he got back with their soccer ball.

Solely focused on their way to the lights, they only managed to avoid barrelling into a civilian by Ai grabbing their collars and yanking them back seconds before they could connect.

“Sorry,” Ai said.

The woman walking past them – a woman with wine-red hair wearing a long dark coat, glanced between the three of them. She didn’t offer the a polite smile, nor any smile at all, simply nodding as she moved her briefcase from one hand to the other.

“Be more careful in the future,” she said, with a small nod of her head. “Those less learned than I would curse you all for that.”

Before they had the time to process, they were at the crime scene and the woman was gone.

* * *

_Prelude v._

There were police cars surrounding the nearby casino. It was a large, looming building and while they weren’t old enough to go inside, what interior they could see appeared to follow a western approach, with a black and red colour scheme to the walls and carpet.

It all seemed much grander than Ayumi thought was reasonable, but perhaps people needed somewhere grand to lose all the money they gambled. Perhaps it felt less like being stolen from when a place looked so rich.

“What do you think happened?” Genta asked.

Ayumi didn’t recognise any of the officers, which meant that this wasn’t a murder, nor a kidnapping. Unlikely to be any violent crime either, she’d met officers from the violent crimes division a bunch of times now and while she didn’t know them by name, she _could_ identify a few from their looks.

“Someone won big,” Ai said, with a faint smile. “Got the jackpot – whatever that means.”

Ayumi watched as officers began to enter the building. An officer with blonde hair exited between them, shaking his head as he joined some of the other police by the cars. Ayumi wondered what he was saying. Assumedly, he’d be talking about the case with the others.

The only information they’d get now would be from news channels or online reports, so Ayumi decided to push the thought away for now. The casino had nothing to do with them, and she had magic tricks to think about and more soccer to play.

“They’ll catch whoever they’re after,” Ayumi said. “And if they don’t, we’ll just have to look into it ourselves!”

_Prelude 0 – Two Months Prior_

* * *

Beep–

_“Hey, Bakaito, it’s Aoko. Answer your damn phone idiot! I hate phone calls, but this is important – it’s about Jii-san. He’s got news that you probably want to hear, I’ll let you hear it from him. Fuck – no I want to tell you now though. Ugh, I’m hanging up – he’ll call you later.”_

Beep–


End file.
